1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data processing system, and more particularly to a data processing system which provides the user with vocalized information of web pages that are written in a markup language.
2. Description of the Related Art
Today""s expanding Internet infrastructure and increasing amounts of web content have enabled us to utilize various information resources available on the networks. While it is definitely useful, the Internet is not equally accessible to everyone. One of the obstacles to Internet access is that people must be able to afford to buy a personal computer and subscribe to an Internet connection service. Another obstacle may be that it requires some knowledge about how to operate a personal computer. Such computer literacy, however, is not in the possession of everybody. Particularly, most resources on the Internet are intended for browsing on a monitor and not designed for people who have a visual impairment or weak eyesight. For those handicapped people, the Internet is not necessarily a practical information source.
To solve the above problems with Internet access, the Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 10-164249 (1998) proposes a system which vocalizes web page content by using speech synthesis techniques for delivery to the user over a telephone network. This system, however, only provides a simple text-to-speech conversion, meaning that what it is limited to the delivery of plain text information, but cannot transfer other meaningful information that may be contained in the document. For example, most web pages use more than one font sizes to emphasize or deemphasize some particular part of the document. That is, the font size carries the author""s intention of placing different importance on some passages in the text. Such non-textual information cannot be transferred by the conventional vocalization techniques. Another example is the use of images. While many web pages rely on visual representation of information, such as pictures, illustrations, drawings, and any other formats, the conventional system would completely filter them out.
Taking the above into consideration, an object of the present invention is to provide a data processing system which vocalizes information available on the Internet, including as much non-textual information as possible.
To accomplish the above object, according to the present invention, there is provided a data processing system which provides a user with vocalized information of web pages that are written in a markup language. This system comprises the following elements: a call reception unit which accepts a call from the user""s telephone set; a speech recognition unit which recognizes a verbal message being received from the user""s telephone set; a web page data collector which makes access to a particular web page to obtain web page data therefrom, when a request for that web page is recognized by the speech recognition unit; a text data extractor which extracts text data from the obtained web page data on a block basis; an attribute extractor which extracts attributes of each of the blocks of text data extracted by the text data extractor; a vocalization order decision unit which determines in what order to vocalize the blocks, based on the attributes extracted by the attribute extractor; and a vocalizer for vocalizing the text data contained in each block, according to the vocalization order that is determined by the vocalization order decision unit.
The above and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings which illustrate preferred embodiments of the present invention by way of example.